The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced their Scribe Award nominees for 2013.
Acknowledging excellence in this very specific skill, IAMTW’s Scribe Awards deal exclusively with licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books. They include original works set in established universes, and adaptations of stories that have appeared in other formats and cross all genres. Tie-in works run the gamut from westerns to mysteries to procedurals, from science fiction to fantasy to horror, from action and adventure to superheroes. Gunsmoke, Murder She Wrote, CSI, Star Trek, Star Wars, Shadowrun, Resident Evil, James Bond, Iron Man, these represent just a few.
The Scribe Awards are being presented in July at ComicCon International.
ORIGINAL NOVEL
Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell
Pathfinder: City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt
Mike Hammer: Lady, Go Die! by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Star Trek: The Persistence of Memory by David Mack
Star Trek: Rings of Time by Greg Cox
Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows by Robert Jeschonek
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Skein of Shadows by Marsheila Rockwell
ADAPTED NOVEL
Poptropica: Astroknights Island by Tracey West
Clockwork Angels by Kevin Anderson
Batman: The Dark Knight Legend by Stacia Deutsch
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises by Greg Cox
AUDIO
Dark Shadows: Dress Me in Dark Dreams by Marty Ross
Dark Shadows: The Eternal Actress by Nev Fountain
Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Project Nirvana by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
You’d think we’d have learned as a people – if you find a large humanoid form frozen in the ice, don’t thaw it out. And really don’t thaw it out if you’re cut off from humanity, like in an arctic research base, or as in this episode, a sinking Soviet Russian submarine. With The Doctor being mistaken for a spy, and an ancient Martian conqueror trying to blow up the world, things were set for an unpleasant interpretation of the term…
COLD WAR
by Mark Gatiss
Directed by Douglas Mackinnon
A Russian submarine unearths an Ice Warrior, frozen in the permafrost of the North Pole. The Doctor arrives (aiming for Las Vegas) and attempts to broker a peace between the already very skittish Russian crew and a warrior who presumes that his people are dead, and that he has nothing to lose.
Gatiss pulls off a great version of the traditional “trapped with a monster” story, wit well-timed scares, the one guy who thinks he can side with the monster, and a smattering of 80s dance tunes. Tense, exciting, and an ending that is rather a surprise. The direction is dead-on for such a film – snatches of images only, never a shot of the full beast, cause there’s no need.
GUEST STAR REPORT
David Warner (Professor Grisenko) is Evil. Or was, anywway, in the classic Time Bandits. His career in and out of the genre is considerable – he played Jack the Ripper in another time-travel classic, Time After Time, voiced The Lobe in Freakazoid! (not to mention Ras Al Ghul on Batman the Animated Series) and played Sark in Tron. His history with Doctor is equally deep. He was in fact offered the role of The Doctor in 1974, but turned it down. Since then he’s appeared in a number of audio adventures, provided a voice in the Dreamland mini-series, and played The Doctor, albeit an alternate one in Big Finish’s Unbound series.
Liam Cunningham (Captain Zhukov) is currently fighting the winter in Game of Thrones as Ser Davos Seaworth. Like warner, he was almost The Doctor – he was in the running for the role in the 1996 TV movie, eventually played by Paul McGann. He also appeared in the Titanic mini-series that brought us our first look at Jenna.
Tobias Menzies (Lieutenant Stepashin) will also be appearing in GoT later this season. He also appeared in ROME as Marcus Brutus.
Mark Gatiss (writer) has been lobbying to bring back the Ice Warriors for some years, and Moffat finally relented. He’s been busy co-writing and creating the new Sherlock series, as well as appearing in the recent series of Being Human. He’s also written An Adventure in Time and Space, the anniversary story of the creation of the series, due to be broadcast near the time of the anniversary.
THE MONSTER FILES – The Ice Warriors first appeared in an eponymous tale during the Troughton era with a number of parallels to this story, in that both feature a frozen member of the Martian race thawed out in haste. In the original adventure, the Ice Warrior Varga was played by Bernard Bresslaw, a regular castmember of the “Carry On” films. He was 6’7″ in stocking feet, and was usually paired with the diminutive Charles Hawtry, letting the difference in size provide much of the comedy. They reappeared shortly after in The Seeds of Death, mainly as a way of justifying the expensive costumes. They reappeared in the Pertwee years in the two Peladon stories. By this time, the former Martians had renounced their warlike ways. The tenth Doctor alluded to them in The Waters of Mars, theorizing in a cut scene that they may have discovered The Flood and froze it in the glacier, abandoning the planet in reponse, recognizing their threat.
Like so many classic series villains, they’ve appeared in many stories in novels and audio plays which served to greatly expand their history. The rank of Grand Marshall and some of the details of the caste system first appeared in the novel Legacy So far, little of the information we’ve seen in those expended adventured have been much used in the series, but contrariwise, little of it’s been expressly discounted either.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
A MODEL THE SIZE OF A QUARTER…AN EXCELLENT DECEPTION – This is one of the first times in years where the special effects on the series were done as model work and not CGI. The Russian submarine was a huge model filled in a miasma of smoke standing in for water.
…AND AGARN’S WEARING A DRESS – I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but I am a complete sucker for the gag where a character makes a suggestion to do something, and another character is all “No, NO way, NOT happening, UH-uh”, and in the next shot, there’s the first character doing their suggestion. It was described perfectly in this scene from Freakazoid!
“Am I speaking Russian?” The TARDIS translates languages for its inhabitants, except of course, when it’s dramatically or comedically expedient not to, like in last week’s episode.
“This wasn’t a test” – Except when it is, of course. The Doctor placed Victorian Clara in a position of danger in The Snowmen, and when she asked “Is this s test?”, he told her it was. Remember rule one – The Doctor lies.
“Jaw jaw, not War War” The Doctor is paraphrasing Winston Churchill, who we learned in Victory of the Daleks is a great friend of The Doctor.
“I reset the HADS” – The Hostile Action Displacement System is a defense mechanism on the TARDIS, last seen in another Troughton episode, The Krotons. When attacked by a threat of sufficient force, the ship dematerializes, removing itself from danger. It’s supposed to rematerialize a short distance and time from its departure point, but as is traditional, things on the TARDIS don’t always go smoothly. It’s a perfect way to get the TARDIS out of the way and force The Doctor to think on his feet, and more inventive (not to mention obscure) that simply having it break down.
BIG BAD WOLF REPORT /CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT –
Another theme has arisen between this episode and the last – Song. Skaldak talks about “singing the songs of the Old Times” with his daughter. It’s how The Doctor describes the call the Ice Warrior uses to summon his suit. It’s an odd choice of words, so I must assume it’s deliberate
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Hide. The title, and very good advice. Next Saturday.
Television has been blessed with the reinvention of two icons. Carlton Cuse (LOST) talks about the choices he made in rebooting PSYCHO as BATES MOTEL, plus David Goyer (DARK KNIGHT, MAN OF STEEL) and his cast share the challenges faced on reintroducing the masses to Leonardo Da Vinci in DA VINCI’S DEMONS (premiering tonight at 10pm ET on Starz). Also, Robyn Schneider (@robinschneider) talks the latest DOCTOR WHO and the CW bails on THE CULT.
The buzz on the massive third-person shooter video game and TV show, DEFIANCE, has been generating for almost a year. Now with the premiere days away (Monday 4/15 on SyFy), we get more details from the set, by way of actress Julie Benz (“Amanda”) . Also 42 THE TRUE STORY OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND opens in theaters this week, and breakout star, Chadwick Boseman along with Harrison Ford, talk about how they helped bring Jackie Robinson back to life. Oh yeah, and another good month in the comic stores – thanks to Marvel!
“Something Awesome”. Seems an easy thing to ask for from a fellow who can go to any moment in time and space, and allows for lots of interpretation. So Clara asks for that, The Doctor is happy to provide, whisking her off to…
THE RINGS OF AKHATEN
By Neil Cross
Directed by Farren Blackburn
The Doctor takes Clara to Akhaten, a group of worlds inside a series of asteroid belts orbiting a huge star. It’s the time of a ceremony that will supposedly keep the god which created their worlds asleep. Young Merry is elected to sing the history of their civilization, and is naturally skittish about getting it right. It’s made plain as time passes that this is more of a sacrifice than a simply ceremony, forcing The Doctor and Clara to take a hand in saving young Merry, and to keep the very real god from eating the system.
The episode serves two purposes; to serve as a BIG info dump for Clara’s backstory, and to really let The Doctor show off to her. As to that second half, it’s very much a parallel to The End of the World, Rose’s first foray into space. Both feature a bevy of new aliens, including the Face of Boe, and both feature am enlarging sun threatening to engulf them.
The story is solid, and Jenna-Louise Coleman does wonderfully in the common spot of the companion’s first exposure to the rest of the universe, but I thought the direction on Matt was a bit lacking. In comparison to the magnificent bombastic speech he gave in The Pandorica Opens, his monologue to the sentient sun was somewhat lacking. It may have been a decision to make him seem sadder, or tired, weighed down, but it came off weak for me. I’d have much rather seen him almost daring the sun to take it all, as opposed to the more resigned tone he had here.
Also, we’re once again seeing a story where the companion saves the day when The Doctor’s plans come up lacking. That’s been happening a LOT more with Moffat’s run on the show, and while I enjoy seeing a strong character, as I’ve said before, I wouldn’t mind seeing The Doctor save everybody on occasion.
THE MONSTER FILES – The sentient sun of Akhaten reminds one of the antagonist in 42, a living sun fighting back after the mining ship accidentally stole her children. This one is clearly more belligerent in its attitude.
The production team went to great lengths to create a wide range of brand new creatures in this episode. We’ve had a couple of big collections of aliens in the new series, like the aforementioned party on Platform One, Dorium’s place in A Good Man Goes to War, and even the bar where Captain Jack met Alonzo. Save for the last one, they’ve gone out of their way to create new aliens, as opposed to grabbing stuff off the rack. One race breathed though some sort of filtration device, somewhat reminiscent of the Hath, the fish-creatures from The Doctor’s Daughter.
GUEST STAR REPORT Neil Cross (writer) Created the series Luther, for which we are all rightly thankful. He also wrote the script for Mama, Guillermo Del Toro’s recent presentation
Farren Blackburn (Director) last worked on Doctor Who when he directed The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe, last year’s Christmas Special. He’s had a long career in directing TV, including an episode of Luther and two of the remake of Terry Nation’s Survivors.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
A TALE THAT GROWS IN THE TELLING – There’s been a number of stories in the series that center around a grand festival that serves as a way for an old threat to return. The most memorable are the twin tales Kinda and its sequel Snakedance. The actions of the villain in those stories were more deliberate; here it’s more a case of time being up for the dormancy of the sun.
“I came here a long time a go with my granddaughter” – This is, in fact, the first mention of Susan in the new series. Clara’s double take on the fact that a man this young-looking can have a granddaughter is not followed up upon, but will almost certainly be referred to again.
Also, did anyone else find it odd that they refer to their god as “Grandfather”?
“What’s happening, why is it angry?” – The TARDIS translates foreign and alien languages automatically for those traveling within it. But there’s almost always a scene where a companion is faced with an alien it can’t understand. Now, there’s any number of explanations that could explain such a thing, like they haven’t been on the ship long enough for all languages to process, or some languages are more differnt from English (or too simplistic, such as more animal -like speech like Doreen’s) to be immediately legible. But it all comes down to the fact that a scene where a Companion misunderstands a situation due to not knowing the language, resulting in a comedic moment, is just plain too comedic a moment NOT to do. And any attempt to inject import into it is just plain Looking Too Hard.
“Not money….something valuable” – The big theme of the story is that of experiences and memories having an intrinsic value. For the people of the system, they’re used as currency, a system which I have to admit sounds cooler than it would be in actual use. I can imagine any number of problems with having to part with one’s cherished belongings in order to buy the groceries. In the case of the god at the center of the system, those memories and experiences are its literal bread and butter. Clearly it merely reads those memories as opposed to draining them, as The Doctor isn’t reduced to an empty shell. In the case of Clara’s leaf, it’s absorbed entirely as it doesn’t have any memories itself, but represents potential existence, a life un-led. Need I mention that this is also the chosen food of the Weeping Angels?
“Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax, and Cabbages and Kings” – The Doctor quotes Lewis Carroll, specifically The Walrus and The Carpenter. While his work has never been mentioned in the TV show, it’s been referenced in the other media a few times. The Doctor met the author in an prose adventure called The Shadows of Avalon, and in a fan-made video adventure called Downtime (which features the Great Intelligence, but that’s likely just a coincedence), it’s revealed that he photographed a young Victoria Waterfield. (Those who know a bit about the kind of photography Mr. Dodgson liked to take of young girls may find a moment of thought there)
BIG BAD WOLF REPORT –
CARLOTTA VALDEZ I WILL MAKE YOU HER – It wasn’t until The Doctor said out loud that the reason he was so keen on spending time with Clara is because she “remind[s] me of someone who died” that I realized that The Doctor is in a similar situation to Scottie in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Like in the film, Scottie loses Madeline after she falls from a high place. The Doctor doesn’t fall into a depression over it (that was from the last one) but does become very excited about meeting her again, or at least another close approximation. Clara’s bold statement that she won’t be a “replacement” for the other Clarae shows an independence that Judy never had in the film. And just to keep the pot stirring, Scottie was the target of a con job, and Judy was only pretending not to know him, when in fact (SPOILERS) she had been posing as Madeline to use him as a patsy in her “death”, (END SPOILERS)
“She’s not possible” – But it’s clear that The Doctor is fascinated by Clara, not in the way Scottie was of Judy, but more as trying to figure out how she can appear at three moments of history. It’s more than spatial genetic multiplicity, which is how Gwen Cooper looks so much like Gwyneth from The Unquiet Dead – here it seems much more like it’s the SAME person, with so many “Clarallels”. He follows her through her whole life, from the moment her parents met to the time of her mother’s passing, which serves to reveal the secrets behind both Clara’s book, and the leaf which she called “page one”. The two years she skipped in the progressive numbers on the book were 16 and 23 – 23 was the year the Maitland’s mom died, and she was simply too bust thinking about them to write in the book, and 16 was the year her own mom died. This also serves to explain how she couldn’t bear to leave her friends on their own when their mom died.
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – What’s big and hard and full of…OK, it’s a submarine, and there’s a bunch of very nervous Russians trying to stay alive against one The Doctor’s oldest enemies. A return to the Cold War, seven days hence.
It’s not quite the way Stan would write it. Super Villain vs Super Hero and the result – somebody gets pregnant. Meet Jourdan Gibson (aka “DarkStar”) star of SUPER KNOCKED-UP, a red hot web series already in its second season. Plus more with Brian Fuller on bringing HANNIBAL to network TV, and Robyn Schneider returns to start Talking Dr Who again.
As I type these words – 20 hours prior to posting – ComicMix is in the following situation. Glenn Hauman is about to board a plane taking him from WonderCon to San Francisco to Newark, New Jersey. We should see him sometime late next year. Martha Thomases and Arthur Tebbel are wandering around Japan hoping the whole North Korea is-gonna-nuke-us thing is a joke. Bob Greenberger is somewhere vaguely north of the White House staring at boxes and wondering how he got so old so fast. Adriane Nash is floating around North Haven Connecticut holding a candle. Vinnie Bartilucci is in Who Heaven studying the 50th anniversary show read-through photos pixel by pixel. Marc Alan Fishman is trying to come up with a way to spend more time with his son Bennett without having to go to Japan. Some of the above are planning on this weekend’s MoCCA Arts Fest.
That leaves me here at ComicMix Central. Always a dangerous thing.
And then my iMac started acting up.
Oy.
I’ve had more than 29 years of experience with all things Macintosh, so I should be able to fix things while Wizardboy Hauman is on the Left Coast. And, while I’m at it, I should be able to shoot down flying monkeys with my psionic death rays.
Turns out that psionic death rays thing might have been easier to pull off. I’ve spent 24 hour doing PRAM zaps and SMC resets, swapping cables, connecting and disconnecting USB cables (2.0 and 3.0), connecting and disconnecting USB devices, fussing with Bluetooth and WiFi, blowing off sundry start-up apps and rebooting like a cobbler on meth. And I still get five copies of the “You’ve got a USB device that’s draining too much power, asshole” error messages cascading across my screen on the average of every 20 seconds.
OK. Every once in a while computers, cars, and human beings break down and I’m way, way past my due. When Adriane isn’t wandering around New Haven county, we’ve got a zillion machines here including iPads and iBooks and iBalls. Unfortunately, Adriane is wandering around New Haven county with some of the above equipment, so I can’t boot my machine as a target disk.
Which means, in English, that I can’t do squat until I’ve fixed it. I’ve got to post Michael Davis’s Tuesday afternoon column (this wouldn’t have been a problem if I got the column on time, as opposed to just past midnight Monday morning; Michael’s got an excuse and it’ll probably be next week’s column) and I’ve got to write and post my column and do all kinds of other important stuff. I can do a lot of this on my iPad and I have, but in order to edit art and post properly, I need that iMac.
And then, literally 55 minutes before Michael’s column is to go up, I find it. Well, maybe not “it” but something that, if disabled, seems to cure about 90% of the problem. That’ll do… and maybe that other 10% will disappear when I reboot.
Or maybe the iMac will go Nagasaki on me: that’s how computers, cars and human beings tell us they want to be replaced.
BBC Books will be releasing Amelia Williams’ children’s classic Summer Falls in e-book form, tying in with its appearance in the Doctor Who episode The Bells of Saint John.
Amelia Williams, néePond, and her husband Rory, The Doctor’s previous companions, were transported back to 1930s New York at the end of The Angels Take Manhattan. Based on the evidence, she became part of the publishing industry, writing this book and publishing the Melody Malone adventure The Angel’s Kiss.
This is the third tie-in book produced for the series, the first two being the aforementioned Melody Malone adventure and The Devil in the Smoke, an adventure featuring Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax the PotatoSontaran.
Summer Falls will be released on April 4th, and is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com.
Riding the wave of major West End productions being cast by popular vote on television, the BBC announced today that the next co-star for the popular science-fiction program Doctor Who will be selected on a new reality show talent competition.
The show, “No Xenon Impact” (An anagram of “Next Companion”) will be executive produced by Caro Skinner and Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the format of his reality show “How do you solve a problem like Maria?“, which cast the lead of the Sound of Music revival. The show will be co-hosted by John “Captain Jack” Barrowman and long-time Doctor Who fan and guest-star David Walliams.
DW Showrunner Steven Moffat admitted he was first “hesitant” at the idea, but admitted “It gives the show a mad new challenge – The Doctor never knows who his new friends will be, and now neither will we.”
The show will premiere on May 25th, a week after the second half of the current series of Doctor Who ends, and will run for six weeks. Contestants (eight female, four male) will be drilled weekly on their acting and improv skill, their knowledge of the program, and what Walliams describes as “A whole lot of running.” Contestants will be voted on weekly by the viewing audience, and a different “guest alien” who “Exterminate” one or two hopefuls live on the program. Matt Smith and current companion (already confirmed to be returning for the eighth series) Jenna-Louise Coleman have agreed to appear for the series finale, where Matt will present a key to the TARDIS to the lucky winner.
Filming for the new eighth series of Doctor Who has yet to be scheduled; it is believed by many that this competition has been in the planning for some time, and the eighth series production has been scheduled to accommodate it.
How many times have you been told not to use wifi you don’t recognize? This week’s episode takes the threat of identity theft to an all new degree. And the only reason The Doctor found out about it at all is cause he got a call from a lady who said she couldn’t find the Internet. Spoiler shields up, watch for falling planes, and listen for…
THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN
By Steven Moffat
Directed by Colm McCarthy
The Doctor is in the early 13th century, meditating over the living (well, living somewhere) mystery that is Clara Oswin Oswald. So when he’s told “The Bells of St. John are ringing”, he races back to his hidden TARDIS, (with its “St. John’s Ambulance” label) where the phone in the door is ringing. He’s getting an impossible call from modern day, from the impossible Clara Oswald, who thinks she’s calling tech support. In London, people are mysteriously dropping dead shortly after using a rogue wifi feed. Clara is having trouble with her wifi, and even after The Doctor comes to help, the troubles only get worse.
A great start to the series, with another trademark move of Moffat; take something common place, and make it terrifying. He’s done it with shadows and statues, and now he’s made wifi something to be feared. Jenna-Louise Coleman makes her (official) debut as the new companion Clara
THE MONSTER FILES – The Spoonheads are another example of a new monster that don’t actually get to do much. Like the antibodies of Let’s Kill Hitler, they’re a physical effect that doesn’t even get to move. The CGI head-spin thing is wonderfully unnerving, and it’s a great visual cue that something creepy is about to happen. We’ve had any number of robots masquerading as humans, including the Teselecta from the aforementioned episode, the titular creations from The Android Invasion, not to mention The Androids of Tara.
The episode has clear similarities and parallels to Mark Gatiss’ episode The Idiot’s Lantern – an unseen force stealing people’s minds via new technology, faces trapped on TV screens, even The Doctor and his companion tooling about on a motorbike. Many (myself included) expected to see a return of The Wire, the energy-based being from that episode, only to be happily swerved by the actual baddie.
GUEST STAR REPORT
Celia Imrie (Miss Kizlet) worked with Jenna on the recent Ttianic mini-series, appeared as the matron in both recent St. Trinian’s movies (films which have reached Kevin Bacon levels for Doctor Who connections), and was Lady Gertrude in the Gormenghast adaptation. She brings a quiet menace to her role, and the final twist was quite tragic.
Geff Francis (George Maitland) actually does spell it like that. He was a regular in the Life on Mars spinoff Ashes to Ashes, as well as on the The Singing Detective. Doctor Who is not afraid to get very good actors for even the smallest parts, but I’m rather hoping that the Maitland family appears again before the end of Clara’s story. There’s a lot of story going on here, and each of the three actors had clear emotions built into their portrayals. Eve De Leon Allen (Angie), star of Nuzzle and Scratch, did particularly well at playing a young girl who has lost her mum, even in the brief moments she had on screen. Eve is the actor whose copy of the Neil Gaiman script was lost in a cab, which suggests that she, and hopefully the rest of the family will indeed be back, at least in that episode.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
CREDITS WHERE CREDITS ARE DUE – The credit sequence is largely unchanged from the Christmas episode, but the theme has undergone another slight tweak. the strings are pushed to the background, possibly gone altogether, and the four-beat theme has been pulled more to the front. The song is a lot deeper, more in the bass range. Some of the sound effects have been edited – the electric twinkly bits have been softened as the Doctor Who logo disintegrates. It’s been shortened slightly – a couple of the motifs are missing as the sequence races to the episode title and the opening of the TARDIS doors, which I must say I love.
SET PIECES – We get a longer look at the new TARDIS in this episode, including the space under the main control floor, which has a wooden storage chest that resembles the design of the short-lived wooden TARDIS set first seen in The Masque of Mandragora. We’re supposed to see a great deal more of the ship’s interior in an episode later in this series.
“He’s definitely not a monk” – The Meddling Monk was the first Time Lord other than The Doctor seen in the series, way back in the Hartnell days, even before the term “Time Lord” had been coined. The Doctor also disguised himself as a monk, a headless one, during the Battle of Demon’s Run in A Good Man Goes To War, and briefly at the end of The Wedding of River Song.
“Eleven’s the best – you’ll cry your eyes out” – The book Summer Falls is written by Amelia Williams, AKA Amy Pond. This is a further clue into her life in New York after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan – she clearly got into both writing, and later publishing, as she was also responsible for publishing the Melody Malone adventures.
Summer Falls will be made available as an e-book tie-in as the Melody Malone adventure was, via BBC E-books on April 2nd.
“That is NOT supposed to happen!” – The Doctor does get calls in his TARDIS, but usually on the phone on the console. The phone on the outside door is not supposed to ring. The last time it did was in The Empty Child, when the mysterious young boy was able to communicate through it. I hasten to add that the young Melody Pond had the same ability to communicate through any phone, as seen in The Impossible Astronaut. I also love the fact that the handset’s cord is comically long.
“You know, I never realized how much I enjoy hering that said out loud” – The Question, “Doctor Who?” has been a recurring theme since the very beginning of the series. It’s become an important plot point since the end of The Wedding of River Song, when it was connected to The Question, asked on the Fields of Trenzilore, at an event know eerily as The Fall of the Eleventh. There have already been teaser ads suggesting that in the anniversary episode, we would learn The Doctor’s true name. Fan rage has risen to high levels over that, and we shall have to wait till November to see how that works out.
“Fine, let’s do it together” Fans of Douglas Adams will recognize that gag from The Hitchhiker’s Guid to the Galaxy as Zaphod and Ford attempt to pilot the Disaster Area sun-dive ship (Or if you’re a REAL fan, the Captain of the Haghunemnon fleet).
“I never take the TARDIS into battle” – The Doctor is driving a Triumph motorcycle, a brand as beloved to the UK as Rolls Royce. The “Trusty Triumph” was the model of choice for soldiers in World War II. Plus, now we know the TARDIS has a garage as well as a swimming pool.
Old friends…very old friends” – UNIT was founded after the second televised appearance of The great Inteligence, thought its leader, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was instrumental in its defeat in the Underground in The Web of Fear. Presumably it kept tabs on The Doctor and his friends in any way it could.
“You don’t run out on the people you care about…wish I was like that” – I’m starting to get actively annoyed with this idea that The Doctor is such a horror to be with. It’s become a recurring idea since The Stolen Planet, and it flies in the face of the experiences of very nearly all of his friends. Yes, the ends have been tragic for a small few, and the rest leave his company as far better people, who go on with their lives doing all they can to make the world a better place. The level of guilt he feels is out of place. He feekls bad about losing Amy and Rory to the Angels, but he knows for a fact they ended up fine.
BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – This may be the fastest reveal of the Big Bad in the new series’ history. The Great Intelligence, generally suspected to be making a quick return after the Christmas episode The Snowmen, were revealed as the mysterious “Client”. It had been announces that Richard E. Grant would be appearing in the series again, tho the BBC was quite mum as to exactly who he would be playing. We can see why.
“The Girl Twice Dead” – Clara’s story is clearly and obviously going to be the biggest puzzle of the series. The three iterations of her we’ve seen so far have delightful parallels, and surely more will be found as the episodes roll on.
We already have more than a few Clara-parallels…Clarallels, if you will:
She was a governess in The Snowmen, with a penchant for helping others. She’s helping a family cope with the loss of their mother in present day, and while her title was “Junior Entertainment Manager” on the Starship Alaska, that could be read not as an assistant to the manager, but the person in charge of entertaining the “juniors” as in, watching the children on the ship.
“RYCBAR123” – Aside from the fact that Whovians everywhere are updating their wifi network names and passwords, this was modern Clara’s inspiration to repeat the phrase across time “Run you clever boy and remember”, uttered by both past and future Clara at their passing, and get him interested in her.
“I call him Nina” – The pet name Oswin gave Rory, after a past paramour (“I was going through a phase”) pop’s up again, as the name of one of Angie’s friends. Yes, it’s a common name, but this is Doctor Who – there are no coincedences.
Just Clara Oswald, what was that middle one?” – Clara comes up with the name “Oswin” as a username when she starts hacking Miss Kislet’s network, but it’s the same name the other two versions of her has.
“The girl at the shop gave it to me, said it was the best help line in the universe” – With the announcement that David Tennant and Billie Piper are returning to the series for the anniversary, Clever Theories are running amuck that Rose was the aforementioned girl in the shop. It might be, and it might not be, but the point is, SOMEONE gave her the number to the TARDIS, and helped her get found.
“101 Places to see…” Even thought the book is designed to resemble The Daring Book for Girls (a sequel to The Dangerous Book for Boys), the traditional end of that title is “…before you die”. Also, if you look about her room, ALL her books have to do with traveling and foreign lands. Many brain cells have been spent on the significance of both the 16 and 23 being skipped in the years in the book. It could be waved off as simply a brief lack of interest in the book those years; last year would have been the time her friend died, and she may have been distracted, for example. But the 23 is a significant number – it’s popped up as Victorian Claras’s birthday (specifically, Novenmer 23rd, the date of the show’s first broadcast) and she mistypes “123” earlier in the episode. And of course, since by delightful coincidence November 23rd is a Saturday this year, the anniversary episode will screen on the exact right day.
Page One may contain a leaf (Maple, I believe – are there many maples trees in England?), but page two contains a letter appearing to be from something or someone named “Delsa”. No ideas who that is yet, but again, they don’t put things in by mistake.
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – The Doctor is SICK of…well, no, he seems quite excited by the idea of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. Lestrade finds his division, Ron Weasley’s did is also Rory’s dad (so…related?) and also Queen Nefertiti. Seven days away…you busy?
The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced their Scribe Award nominees for 2013.
THE MONSTER FILES – The Ice Warriors first appeared in an eponymous tale during the Troughton era with a number of parallels to this story, in that both feature a frozen member of the Martian race thawed out in haste. In the original adventure, the Ice Warrior Varga was played by Bernard Bresslaw, a regular castmember of the “Carry On” films. He was 6’7″ in stocking feet, and was usually paired with the diminutive Charles Hawtry, letting the difference in size provide much of the comedy. They reappeared shortly after in The Seeds of Death, mainly as a way of justifying the expensive costumes. They reappeared in the Pertwee years in the two Peladon stories. By this time, the former Martians had renounced their warlike ways. The tenth Doctor alluded to them in The Waters of Mars, theorizing in a cut scene that they may have discovered The Flood and froze it in the glacier, abandoning the planet in reponse, recognizing their threat.
Amelia Williams, née Pond, and her husband Rory, The Doctor’s previous companions, were transported back to 1930s New York at the end of The Angels Take Manhattan. Based on the evidence, she became part of the publishing industry, writing this book and publishing the Melody Malone adventure The Angel’s Kiss.
